Black Desert Online Fishing can help you can make millions of silvers in the game. Fishing is one of the best ways to make money making becoming a masterful fisherman one of your priorities when you start the game.
While it may sound like a hand-to-mouth job to earn from, it’s actually one of the best ways to make massive amounts of money in the game. In order to do so though, you’ll need preparation, understanding, and also some wits.
This guide will help you turn into a millionaire fisherman in the game. First, you’ll need to understand the basics of Black Desert Online fishing.
Black Desert Online Fishing Tips
What You Need
The first and most basic thing you’ll need in order to fish is a fishing rod. Even the worst, most basic fishing rods will work, so go on and grab one. You can purchase a rod from a Fish Merchant NPC on your map.
Black Desert Online Fishing Merchants can be found on the map; they have a bluish fish icon that designates them.
Next up, there is the optional Paste Bait. Bait is what you can equip with a fishing rod before casting it on the line. It increases the fishing speed by a certain amount of time.
However, bait is completely option, and mostly unnecessary, especially if you are trying to get the hang of the entire concept of fishing in the game.
In order to get bait, you will need to collect 5 Fish Tokens. These are obtained when you trade caught fish with the Fish Merchant. Once you have 5 tokens, you can exchange them for bait or a random buff.
Black Desert Online Fishing Mini-Game
With a fishing rod, you can now head to the shores and find a fishing spot. When you are at the fishing spot, equip the rod and hit the spacebar. Wait a while (about 2 minutes) and you’ll eventually get a small moving fish icon above your head.
This is the indication that a fish has been caught in the hook, and will start the mini-game. The first part of the mini-game is a small bar that is separated by a distinct red line. There is an additional small bar that moves around.
You need to hit spacebar when the moving bar goes past the red line to the right side. Failing to do so will result in you losing the fish.
Timing it correctly however will continue the mini-game. If you manage to hit spacebar when the bar is completely full, you will hit a ‘Perfect,’ which will completely skip the second part of the mini-game.
The second part of the mini-game is triggered when you hit the bar correctly but don’t land a Perfect. This stage will merely have you pressing the key sequence in correct order before the timer bar reaches zero.
Failing to hit even one of the sequences or time running out will result in you losing the fish. When you successfully hit the sequence, you will catch the fish, which will bring up your loot inventory. You can either collect the fish or decide to leave it.
Black Desert Online Fishing Resources
Not every body of water will have the same amount of fish. The amount of fish in any lake/pond/sea largely depends on two major, correlated factors: the amount of people fishing in that specific place, and the duration the fishing spot has been populated.
When you approach a fishing spot, you’ll read the resource at the top. It can either be Abundant, Average, Not Enough, or Exhausted. Every spot starts off at Abundant by default, but if a lot of people have been fishing at that spot for several hours, it will eventually become exhausted.
A reduced resource status means greatly increased time to catch a fish, greatly reducing your efficiency if you wish to be a fish merchant of your own.
Black Desert Online Auto-Fishing
You don’t have to go through the mini-game if you wish to fish for longer periods of time. You can perform what is called as auto-fish, or more well known as AFK-fishing (AFK standing for ‘away from keyboard’).
In order to auto-fish, simply cast your line and go AFK. Do not touch anything or press anything, or else the auto-fishing will stop. Auto-fishing continues as long as your rod is durable.
The moment your rod breaks, auto-fishing will stop. It will not automatically switch fishing rods from your inventory if it breaks, so make sure you have an idea about your rod’s durability before auto-fishing.
Now that you know the basic stuff, it’s time to dwell into more advanced Black Desert Online fishing to really make some money.
Black Desert Online Fishing Advanced Tips and Strategy
On to the some of the advanced stuff now! The first thing you want to do is get yourself some better fishing rods.
Rods
All rods break, and are unusable once they do. They cannot be repaired (except Artisan Rods), so you’ll have to go buy a new one. That doesn’t mean you’ll be stuck with that crappy Old Fishing Rod though.
You can craft better, advanced rods that will greatly improve your fishing efficiency. In order to craft a rod, you will need a Tool Shop in a city/town/node.
You will also need a worker assigned to that Tool Shop. Once you have a worker working there, you will now be able to craft better rods. The higher the level of the Tool Shop, the better rods you’ll be able to construct.
Level 1 Tool Shop allows you to craft Thick Fishing Rods. Level 2 will craft Steel Rods, and Level 3 will craft Golden and Artisan Rods.
- Thick Fishing Rods are green tier and can be equipped at level 10. They have 40 durability (10 more than Old and Regular rods), provide increase chance to obtain better fish, and +1 Fishing Level (speed).
- Steel Fishing Rods are blue tier and required Level 5 Skilled fishing to equip. They have a high chance of catching better fish, have 65 durability, and +2 Fishing Level.
- Golden Rods are yellow tier and require Level 1 Professional to equip. They have 100 durability, similar chance of catching better fish as Steel Rods, and +3 Fishing Level for some really fast fishing.
- Artisan Rods are the best fishing rods in the game, and the only type of rods that can be repaired and also enchanted. They require Level 1 Artisan too equip. Each rod has a default 50 durability. Enchanting different Artisan rods will give different effects. Generally, enchanting them will greatly boost the chances of finding rare fish, increasing durability, and lowering auto-fish timers.
Materials for Advanced Rods
You can’t make advanced rods out of the blue – you’ll need to get the right type of ores. If you are serious about the Black Desert Online fishing business, you should plan ahead.
Invest heavily in nodes that are rich in Iron and Copper Ores. This will allow you to collect materials early to build advanced rods. Eventually, you should also search for nodes that give gold ores (through mining).
Making Money from This Fishy Business
Alright, now you’ve got your shiny rod, you’ve also gotten bait to further boost your harvesting, and you’re catching fish like a pro. It’s now time to make money off of this talent.
You need to understand that fish are trade items, and can only be sold to Trade Manager NPCs. This means that every single manager has a different price.
The price they offer you depends on different factors, such as bonus, how common that fish is, how many times it has been sold to the same NPC, freshness of fish, and what type of city/node the Trade Manager is in (farmers don’t need fish).
In order to get the best value from your fish, you absolutely must have connected the origin of the fish you are selling (the node that you caught the fish from) to where you are selling it.
If you do not have the two connected, you will receive a whopping 70% value penalty to every single fish you sell. That’s not good business. Now, keeping that in mind, establish nodes as far away as possible from Trade Managers that you will want to sell the fish to.
The reason for this is that there is a bonus distance factor, which is about 2% every connected node. So, if you are selling farther than 8 nodes, you will have a massive increase in value of your wish provided the nodes are all connected together.
Thirdly, you want to make sure you are selling fish that others are not selling, at least to the same Trade Manager. If a Trade Manager has an excess amount of a certain fish, he/she will give buy your fish for a reduced amount.
For this reason, try to be a bit creative. Combine all these mentioned factors together to sell rare fish to far-away places. You should keep all these in mind, as well as the freshness of the fish and the distance value of a manager you are selling to.
Use simple math to calculate the best value being offered by a manager, then sell off to them as quickly as possible for maximum profit.
